The Moz Blog

Police and Content Thieves

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

A couple months ago my boyfriend (Manstery Guest) wrote an article called called 10 Fictional Diners We Want to Eat At and posted it on the food site he manages for the Village Voice. The article didn't quite make it on some of the major social news sites, but it does receive a small amount of traffic via StumbleUpon (it has a one star rating and a couple of reviews). Yesterday someone alerted him to another site that had posted the exact same article in its entirety. This site was receiving a ton of traffic from Reddit and StumbleUpon for an article that was stolen from another site. There wasn't even a mention of credit to the original source or a link back to Daily Fork. It was a rip off, pure and simple.

Irritated, Jason wrote a blog post over at Think Basis called "If You Can't Think of Anything Original, Don't Start a Blog." He also contacted the thieving site and asked the owner to remove the article. The owner ended up removing the images and a good chunk of content but kept the list intact and added a wimpy "For full info and pictures please visit Source of Story on Daily Fork...Thanks!" (As an aside, the site that stole the content is pinging off the charts on the Douche Bag Meter. They seem to steal popular lists and articles from other sites on a regular basis, including this one about the 20 Worst Action Film Stars of All Time from PopCrunch.)

Jason's Think Basis post made it onto Reddit with the title "Some asshat makes it on reddit by plagiarizing my work. Flattering, maybe. Stealing, absolutely." The submission got a ton of upvotes and mixed comments. Some users remarked stuff like, "Who cares, everyone steals," and "That's how professional blogging works" and "If I was the author of this blog post I'd almost be too embarrassed to claim authorship in the first place. It's a fucking list article not Shakespeare." The latter comment is akin to saying that it's wrong to rob a bank but it's okay to take some money out of a 7-11 cash register, as if there are acceptable tiers of theft.

As a frequent writer/content creator/list generator/blogging monkey, I can say that it doesn't matter if I've written a guide, a research paper, a thoughtful blog post, a stupid list, or drawn some idiotic illustration for shits and giggles, I created that content and I'm going to get pissed if I see that someone else has ripped it off and is passing it off as their own. The same thing happened to Matt Inman a few months ago--he created a quiz called "How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?" It did pretty well virally, and a while later I got an IM from one of my social media buddies asking me to upvote a quiz on Reddit. I checked out the quiz and it was virtually the exact same premise as Matt's quiz and even used the graphics Matt had built (the only difference was that the guy who stole the quiz MS Painted a crowbar into the dude's hand). Matt was (understandably) pissed to see that someone had stolen something he built and was reaping the benefits from his work.

If you're writing a list, designing a quiz, illustrating a web comic, etc., you delight in the traffic that your content attracts. I love seeing people react to my content and the links built to it. Having some sleazy jackass just copy and paste your content onto his site and steal traffic and links that could otherwise be going to you is infuriating. Jason's right: if you can't write or don't have an original thought rattling around your brain, don't bother starting a blog. If you want to start a blog but don't fancy yourself a writer, hire some people to write for you. Or you can mention content you found on the web and liked, but LINK TO IT and properly attribute the content like a DECENT HUMAN BEING. Otherwise, you're just ripping off other people's hard work simply because you're too dumb to put together a halfway decent pop culture list in numbered order.

The situation would have been different if the guy emailed Jason to say "Hey, I really liked your list and wanted to feature it on my site," and then they could have worked out some sort of agreement. It's much worse to come across something that you wrote and the site owner never contacted you as if he figured you'd never find out about getting ripped off. To make matters worse, these a-holes can just ignore your requests to remove or edit the content for proper attribution, resulting in DMCA take down requests that may take a long time to get addressed (if they even do at all). It's just a frustrating, stressful situation for a copywriter/content creater to find himself/herself in. It doesn't matter if your content makes you money or if you just write for the hell of it--that content is yours, and people should respect what you've produced.

Now, I know I'm preaching about an Internet world that doesn't exist ("people should get proper credit for their work, dagnabbit, and nobody should steal!"), but I'm sharing my opinion anyway. The bottom line is that you shouldn't be a douchebag and pass off other people's work as your own for your financial gain. It's not hard to attribute authorship and link back to the rightful owner, and it's also not difficult to contact the author in the first place before you plan on doing something with their content. Don't be an asshole...and if you steal my rant post and publish it as your own, I'm gonna get stabby up in here.

About rebecca —
Rebecca Kelley is the content marketing manager for Intego, a Mac software company. She also guest-blogs/freelances at various places and runs a couple hobby blogs for shits and giggles.

49 Comments

Take your piece of useful information and wrap it in offensive language, obscenities, and embarrassing personal information. If anyone republishes it, they'll be much more likely to NOT take credit for it.

I am a photographer. This happens all the time with photos. There are a large number of people who there who make a living stealing photos, creating linkbait lists and making money off the traffic.

The two biggest theives are weburbanist.com and webecoist.com. They provide links to the source of the theft as if that makes it ok. Go and check the original photos and you'd be hard pressed to find any under the Creative Commons which allow for commerical use and mashups. Often times they don't even link to the copyright holder of the photos, they only link to the site they stole it from, who may have stole it from someone else.

I've notified StumbleUpon and Digg about their rampant violation of copyright, but nothing happens. They have 100,000 RSS subscribers, without really producing any content.

Very nice tool. While more "power user" thieves will just delete the link back to the site where the content was stolen, at least it helps to improve the result of having the inevitable happen and playing the odds.

Those guys are total ass bags. I can't believe that article just got copied like that...

It would be a nice feature in Webmaster Tools if Google put up a warning when it finds duplicate content that fist appeared on your site. At the moment, it's a complete drain on resources to look for every little prick that takes your work. We should be using that time to create more great content. This is a feature Google should really consider. It's completely inline with their stated goals.

Yes, stealing other peoples intellectual property is wrong. I believe it is legal to take lists though. The last time I visited the US copyright webpage, it mentioned that most lists cannot be copywrighted ie. cookbook ingredients. This does not mean that it is right to go around stealing everyones list of data and pass it off as their own experience.

Stealing content as a whole is certainly wrong. There are no two views on that, I would say. Just because others do it as well doesn't make it right either...... but: where do you draw the border?
Where do you start saying: Okay, you stole this from me and when is it still: You were inspired by me? That's what happens all the time. You see something, you are inpired and create something that is SIMILAR to the original content.

So when is that "border" reached? When is it stealing and when is it only inspiration?

I can certainly understand your frustration. It's good to get articles like this out there, and it may help cripple someone's conscience. But as long as people have no clear standard between what is right and what is wrong, there are unfortunately always going to be issues like this.

Even if there were a standard, there would be people breaking it. It's a shame.

Its interesting that you didnt mention the larger issue of "old media" vs Google - as there are parallels to be drawn between theses issues. If someone creates original content then they should be attributed with that, whether the reward is physical (links), monetry, or simply pride (as in the academic world).

It does worrry me somewhat that there are an increasing number of sites that feel its ok to present someone elses work as their own (Diggbar and scraper sites veer into this area). But at least they have the "excuse" that its automatic. In this case it was blatant theft, but due to the wild west attitude of much of the web its difficult to prevent this.

As uncool as it is, I do wish the internet was a little more regulated, as in the physical world there are measures to prevent the theft of work (copyright laws mostly).

Unfortunately, this thing happens in every type of intellectual property. And DMCA looks like the only alternative for online content . I stopped of worrying about if somebody copies one of my posts or something similar. It is a waste of time. It is better if I am focused on building authoritative sites over time. Of course some situations deserve a DMCA take down request but a DMCA for only one post is a really slowwww and complex process that I don't want to do.

I'm just laughing at the clueless dumbass "social media buddy" who asked you to upvote something he stole from your real life friend and former coworker. It's entertaining you can have people that stupid.

Great article! What annoys me most about blog scrapping and plagiarism is that in some cases the copycat will thrive whereas the original may be completely knocked out of search results. It happened to my first blog and I was so pissed! One would think Google and other search engines are smart enough to detect cases of content theft but they are not. If a blog is scrapped without a backlink, is next to impossible for Google to decide who's got the original copy.

This is probably a bigger issue than we realize but a good friend of mine has had his entire website stolen. They created a site using his custom css and similar business model, they just changed the language. They couldn't even be bothered to remove his information from the style.css file. This happened twice.

By the way, I've actually seen some twitter users exclusive publishing every blog post and Youmoz post as well as some blogs/websites doing the exact same thing, and that riles me because not only is it redundant, but these folks try to make money off of everyone else's work with no effort on thir own but to copy and paste...

Rita, I don't think the folks on SEOmoz worry about users promoting the content from the site, but when someone claims it their own and scrapes article content then uses twitter or the social web to prmote the article from their site not the originating source - then its a clear NO.

Otherwise, SEOmoz and any other SEO/content publisher would love the extra help of promoting the material...

I have just filed complaints against webecoist for exploiting my prize winning PUBLISHED and copyrighted photo. It has taken me hours and I mean hours contacting several bloggers, myspace, domains I never heard of and I filed DMCA complaints with everyone, the final step is google, of which the paperwork needs to be faxed over. I could not agree more with this post and I am completely stressed out over this.

In Defense of myself, the only person who "lost out" on a job were the ones who didn't come prepared. I don't care how much "school" you may have as a programmer...or whatever (my schooling was in marketing and SEO involves ALOT of marketing).

After I was hired I was told that the main reason I was hired was because I came in as the most prepared applicant as I actually brought in a portfolio of work I had done, documents of past accomplishments and reports using SEOmoz's tools about the job I was applying for.

I can see no correlation between Rebecca's comment on my post and this article.

One more thing...I know we are in the SEO industry and jeans and a t-shirt is ok but I feel another reason why I got the job was because I came in looking good in a full suit...just like my momma always taught me!

Alright, I concede, stealing content and using it as your own has no ties to fudging a resume. I just don't participate in either.

Adam, I wasn't commenting on your situation in particular, that's why I linked to Rebecca's comment and not your post. I don't know you and don't particularly care how you got the job. It's great that you're doing well. I wish you continued success and agree with your take on SEO as a Marketing function.

First, I'd like to say I like the functionality of the comment process here. And the seomoz.org site has gone through a serious usability upgrade in the last year. This has given me a real eye opener against my own subjective thoughts are about web design.

Rebecca, I understand your point, but I am still surprised for people who have been around for a while now in seo; to debate the ownership of publicy broadcasted web content.

Let's agree Rebecca:

1. Sure the content belongs to the original creator of such said content.

2. The original author can make formal copyright registrations of his or her work.

3. The author can legally make application for copyright infingement and file all necessary court orders and documents, usually with the aid of a barrister or solicitor; otherwise commonly referred to as a lawyers, among other references.

However, only the first point will hold true over time. The reason is simple economics. It is grossly cost prohibitive to pursue most copyright infringements, due to global borders, just to name one aspect of it.

Secondly, the Internet and the web are public domain. Therefore, all content that can be accessed without passwords, automatically makes the content available for public use.

Finally, since as an author of the said orginal content, once it is published, you have lost all control over where and how it is distributed.

So what can you learn from my ramblings Rebecca? Always start with the known fact; once you publish anything, it is up to the world wide web (everyone else) how, where, and when your original content is distributed and displayed.

You are welcome to disagree Rebecca, but the disagreement comes from your notion that once you publish on a public domain, you still have rights that can be exercised. I am sure that when you ever decide to go through the process of legal prosecution, you will see all your above rights have no merit due to the enormous cost of protecting your copyrights.

What can you do? Plenty. The first is only distribute what you will disclose for free. Second, create a digital information product with a password. Sell the additional information which you do not want to give away for free.

Profit from your works. The rule: Only publish what you don't want to control. Everything else, create the proper mediums for distribution, including hard copy. Profit from it, and realize the web for the most part is free. It is a free thought media event that is continously flowing like rain from the sky.

It is only copyright protected if it can be lawfully enforced. Otherwise, it is like copywriting the clouds in the sky. Once you come to terms of what the web is in all it's glory and disgust; you'll have the realistic mind set to distribute and control everything you create.

And you'll be alot happier because of it. "Live long and prosper." It still works for me Rebecca. How about you?